Our basic research projects are designed to provide a better understanding of biochemical systems an to find better ways to use existing methods. One example of this is our work in using molecular dynamics for conformational searching. For this we are using several trial systems where the desired structures are known. We have run hundreds of simulations on these trial systems in which many parameters such as temperature and step size, electrostatic conditions, etc. have been varied in a systematic manner. With these results we can hopefully tailor the algorithms to provide reasonable structures for applied projects where structures are not known. We are extending this approach to attack the protein folding problem from the small system end using the "brute force" approach. As computers become less expensive, this type of approach may provide better results than "intelligent" approaches, though a combined approach is a long range goal of our development efforts.